Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 17:11:22 -0500 (CDT)
From: Stephen Perrella <perrella-AT-comp.uark.edu>
Subject: Re: deleuze & guattari




On Wed, 20 Jul 1994, Erik Davis wrote:

> 
> 
> [__]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \  / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[__]
>  []      Erik Davis     (oo)  Cernunnos sez (cribbing the Fall): The only  []
>  []   erikd-AT-panix.com    __   thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes.  [] 
> [__]==================== ww ==============================================[__]  
> 
> On Tue, 19 Jul 1994, mer wrote:
> 
> > this November.  If you don't mind, I'd like to post the abstract to see what
> > kinds of responses I might get from this collection of DeleuzoGuattariofolks.
> ...
> > Deleuze and Guattari, Cognitive Science and the Visual Arts: Joseph Beuys'
> > Fat and Kiki Smith's Bodies Without Organs Without Bodies
> > 
> > In *The Embodied Mind*, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch
> > represent the mind as having two competing cognitive processes occuring
> > simultaneously.  Cognitive processes at the local level, that is, from the
> > senses, the organs of the body and the endocrine system, as well as from
> > the operations of memory, self-organize or "emerge" into a global state.
> > That global state may be considered a fiction, since it has no being. It does
> > function, however, to constrain those lower order processes in order to act in
> > the world as if it were unified and autonomous. Thomas Weissert & others argue
> > these antithetical processes also serve to inform complex cultural processes.
> > I would like to apply these two processes so to help inform a distinction
> > in the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: the various processes
> > of Becoming associated with the senses and the bodily organs; and their crucial
> > concept The Body Without Organs, the operations of which are usually described
> > in terms of geometrical constructs such as "strata""plane of consistency" etc.
> > The contingency of processes of self-organization are always already becoming
> > against the superimpositions bearing resemblance to schema that frame and
> > constrain contingency from within as well as from without the unified, autonomo
> > us yet fictional global construct.

the rest of the text is deleted for brevity of post:

s. Perrella writes:
I would like to address this post in progress with a question regarding 
the relationship between Complexity theory (emergent behavior) and the 
thought of D+G. I see in the post (truncated) above there is some 
speculation from the point of cognitive structures. We all know that D+G 
are basically deconstructing Spinoza and Leibnitz to effect similar yet 
more practical and certainly "materialist" views similar to Derrida. 
Yet I haven't come across any blatant connections between, what you have seen 
on the Science shelves lately as "Complexity" theory (after chaos, or at 
the edge of chaos). Does anyone know of any? For instance I just came 
across a new book called, "Digital Mantras" by Steven R. Holtzman /mit press.
Holtzman seems to be making similar connections between buddhist and 
complexity theory, the question is how to figure in D+G.

just wondering.  it's a matter of time anyway.

sp


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